The trend of elderly or needy persons or else of persons with physical or mental disabilities living independently for as long as can be justified evolves unabated. These persons can live independently almost all the time; however, the probability of aid being required is higher than in the case of young or healthy or physically/mentally unburdened persons. In order to be able to offer these persons the highest degree of security and, at the same, comfort, different systems for triggering help signals have become established:
Thus, for example, house emergency systems with emergency warning devices serve to enable these persons to call for help via a communication network in times of need. These house emergency systems usually require manual actuation of the emergency warning device. However, it is also possible to account for emergencies in which the persons themselves are no longer able to actively operate the emergency warning device, for example because these are unable to move or even unconscious as a result of the emergency. To this end, use can be made of e.g. activity buttons in the house emergency system, which need to be pressed at regular time intervals. Therefore, these activity buttons correspond to the so-called dead man's switches, as a used e.g. in work safety or rail vehicles. As an alternative to this, there are means in which active actuation of the activity buttons can be dispensed with and, instead, the activity of the persons is monitored by means of e.g. motion sensors or door contact sensors. Here, an alarm notification is output after a set period of time during which no activity was registered.
Document DE 10 2011 005013 A1, which arguably forms the closest prior art, discloses a monitoring system for monitoring inactive behavior of a monitored person, a method and a corresponding computer program. In the monitoring system, the monitored zone, that is to say e.g. the domicile of the person to be monitored, is divided into at least two monitored rooms, wherein a separate room model for modeling the inactive behavior is provided for each monitored room. As soon as the person to be monitored enters the corresponding room, the room model for monitoring the inactivity, assigned to the room, is started. If the activity data of the monitored person deviates too strongly from the room model, an alarm is emitted.